Sunday, May 13, 2018

Mansplaining

A few years ago I was at Bob and Cathie's house and I saw Bob's 1968 beautiful green road bike in a pile of junk. I asked my parents what they were doing with this bike and they were like "we're throwing it away because we don't value things anymore" which isn't exactly what they said but that's what I heard.

So I screamed at them a thing I've screamed at them before, which thing is why my garage is currently filled to capacity with a 1970s roll-top desk, various shelving units, and other odds and ends from the 80s, "IF YOU CAN'T TAKE CARE OF YOUR THINGS, I WILL."

As I was putting the bike on my bike rack on the back of my car, Bob was like "are you even going to use that?" and I was like "ONLY EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE."

As of yesterday, that bike had been sitting in my garage untouched for three years.

Skylar is starting medical school at the University of Utah in the fall because he's a genius and he's going to give all of us free and invasive physicals once a year for the rest of our lives. He told me recently that he wanted to buy a bike to ride to school sometimes. So I told him he could have Bob's old bike if we could get it in working condition.
My friend Emily started buying old bikes at garage sales last year and then taking them apart and fixing them up at home. She currently has so many old bikes in her possession that they're making a whole new Hoarders series that's just about her.

Notwithstanding, Emily has done an exceptional job fixing up these bikes. (You can see them on her Insta account devoted to following the progress of her restorations at schwinnprojects). So, Skylar, Emily, and I spent the better part of our Saturday morning taking Bob's old bike apart to clean it and figure out what it needs.

While we were working away, I asked Emily if there are any bike shops she prefers to go to. She told me that she has a hard time with bike shops because the people who work in them treat her like she's an idiot, assuming that she can't possibly know anything about bikes because she's a woman. So she constantly has to deal with bike shop people mansplaining what pedals are and which bikes are best to ride to the kitchen when you're wearing a skirt while pregnant, and in that one tone and you know what tone I'm talking about, meanwhile she's at home inventing new bikes that are being used by NASA in space.

Emily said she has the same problem with car mechanics, whose expertise covers another topic about which she has above-average knowledge.

I was only half listening because she wasn't talking about me or Tami and I refuse to care about other people's experiences.

I'M KIDDING YOU GUYS CALM DOWN.

But to be honest, I did wonder generally if this could be one of those things and I can't think of the word for it but one of you will scream it at me in the comments and then tell me I don't deserve a high school diploma--but it's one of those things where you think a thing is going to happen to you so you read all evidence in a certain way to support the thing you think. Let's call it Tami Phenomenon.

So I thought maybe this was a Tami Phenomenon so I just told Emily "that must be really hard" and then I explained to her why bikes have wheels and then we left.

I needed to run a couple of quick errands and so I dragged Skylar with me, and while we were out and about I saw a knitting store. I decided to pop in because I FINA-FREAKING-LY finished my brioche knit scarf that I legit spent hundreds of hours on. Just in time for summer!

My friend Spencer was staying with me the night I finished the scarf and he asked me if I wanted to go out with him and some friends and I told him that I was really busy and couldn't do it. Then he saw the slew of below photos posted to my Instagram story at 10:30 that night and communicated to me that he is very sad about the direction my life is going but the joke's on him cause my neck is super warm! (And kind of chafed).

So up we walked into this knitting store to see if they had a snuggie pattern for my next project WHY CAN I NOT FIND ONE.

A woman was at the front desk and she politely said hello as we walked in. We started looking around and feeling the soft baby alpaca yarn and Skylar found this yarn that was so thin that I think it may have actually been floss and he asked me if I would "just" make him a medium sized blanket out of it and I was in the middle of finding the rudest ways to tell him no when the woman came over and was like "boys, this is yarn. People can make things out of this. Do you know what yarn is?" and she said it in that tone and I was suddenly like "I know what yarn is, lady. I just spent hundreds of hours making a mistake-ridden scarf to wear this summer."

And she tilted her head down and was all like "wow. Good job. Would you like me to show you the best knitting needles to hold while you're playing sports and grunting?" and I was like "OMG YOU'RE THE EMILY'S MECHANIC OF KNITTING STORES" and she was like "huh?" cause she hadn't been helping us on the bike earlier and didn't hear that conversation.

And the point is, that I will now be more appropriately indignant every time any woman anywhere tells me about how they are treated by men who think they don't know anything.

(Note: Obviously I don't actually think the knitting store experience was hurtful or makes me truly understand what Emily's experience is like. It was just ironic that Emily had just talked about that thing and then I experienced the thing in reverse. It was like, um, a total Tami Phenomenon.)

What about you? Do you ever get treated like an idiot in stores because of your gender/age/the color of snuggie you are wearing/etc.?

And while you're pondering that, check out this week's episode of Strangerville wherein I actually make Meg cry. Like, real tears. I'm not kidding. Plus, one of my favorite stories we've produced this year.

This time in Strangerville, Meg LIES ABOUT ELI’S TEXT MESSAGES AND HE TASTED HIS OWN MEDICINE IT IS BITTER. Also, many conversations about TV. And then a woman explains why not every adult is responsible to watch your children. Like, seriously.

30 comments:

I really, really like that mistake-ridden scarf (your own words—it looks perfect to me in the pics. (Your hair and Duncan Doodle make everything look perfect.)) Also, scarves in the summer should totally be a thing when you work in an office building that is insanely air conditioned. What is wrong with the people who set thermostats? People should get to wear cute sweaters in the winter and cute sundresses in the summer. Seriously. Air conditioning and heating shouldn't be that hard to set.

Anyway.

I'm a stay-at-home mom, so there are actually lots of times when people assume I don't know anything about anything other than changing diapers and being pregnant. Gender, race, age—it doesn't matter. It's employed vs. non employed in my situation. I actually usually just listen rather than feel indignant, but that's probably because for me the topics are very varied. It's not always bike mechanics or car mechanics or yarn. It's whatever the person's speciality is, so even though they might be redundantly telling me things I already know, because I did go to college, and I'm very well read, I also usually pick up something I didn't already know. So not exactly your situation. If it was ALWAYS the same topic, I think that would get really old, really, really fast.

And I did use to work in an office that had horrible temperature settings, so I can still complain about that even though right now I'm at home with theoretically full control over the room temperatures.

Not the exact same thing, but currently dealing with infertility I get idiotic comments like, “did you know there are apps to track that?” as if my MEDICAL CONDITION is something I can fix with an app. Or “you should try xyz” as if I, am infertile woman, know less about my problem than you, the random person who got pregnant without trying.

I know it isn’t the same as mansplaining but it’s the same sort of attitude where people seem to think I’m just dumb enough I don’t know how to “do it.”

I can relate 100%. My husband and I struggled with infertility for years, and the comments from others were/are just awful. "Just relax" is the worst one. No one tells a diabetes patient that relaxing will cure their disease. Also, people asking if we will do IVF or adopt, as if those choices and options are as easy as getting your teeth cleaned, got horribly old. When we finally did get pregnant with a viable embryo, a woman told me that I did not in fact need to spend thousands of dollars on medical interventions; I could have cured our issues naturally with wheat germ!

"My friend's cousin's stepdad's sister was having trouble getting pregnant, and then they adopted and the day after they got the baby she found out she was pregnant!". On my end, after I had my first daughter (via IVF), I also got a lot of people telling me that pregnancy tends to fix fertility issues and that *everyone* gets pregnant more easily after they've had a successful pregnancy so omg you'll probably get pregnant again right away. Like oh ok, I'll tell my husband that his low sperm count is fixed now on account of my current pregnancy.

I hope you don't mind that I'm jumping on this band-wagon. I'm single, have decided I want to have a baby on my own, only to learn that I waited too long. I'm 38 and have been in menopause for 4 yrs. I know people say the stupidest things to infertile couples, but man, I'm creating a whole new level of insensitive/stupid comments. The best are ones from people who think I haven't thought of EVERY option, researched it out, priced it, weighed the pro/cons, and STILL think I'm being selfish for making the choice to do IVF with donors on both sides. My favorite: "have you tried acupuncture? my daughter-in-law cured her menopause (at 28-likely PCOS) and was able to get pregnant." Ya, I'm pretty sure the ovaries don't regenerate with a few pin pricks.

I hate getting things mansplained to me It's annoying. But on a good note, there are patterns for knitted snuggies. Most of them are "blanket with sleeves" patterns. Please please please don't read that with a mansplaining voice! It wasn't meant that way.

A friend just recommended we watch the French movie, "I Am Not an Easy Man". It's a comedy (on Netflix) where societal gender roles get reversed. My husband was laughing the whole time and it just got me more and more angry about all the crap women put up with. So yeah, now I'm recommending it to you.

I know you've said that you didn't want the podcast to become just two people talking. But, I have to say, maybe my favorite part each week is listening to you and Meg banter. So, on my account at least, no need to feel that detracts from the experience.

I was a school aide all through college and taught for a few years before we had kids. Parent Teacher Conferences now are awful in the ‘splaining way! I know what consonant-vowel-consanant words are and what phonemes and PALS tests are. I know why it’s important to read to my kids and how to use different strategies to help my kids become better readers. My kids don’t remember me as a teacher and I don’t go barging into the school with my credentials, so I get that there is going to be some general ‘splaining going on and I politely sit through it. But. BUT, I have three older children, you’ve taught two of those, and at our last PT conference, you asked how I know all this (aside from the other two years of ‘splaining?). So you know that while I’m a SAHM, I also have many years of experience in actual classrooms, actually teaching children. And here we are again talking about CVCs. Blargh.

Laynie's story was phenomenal! For his sake, it's probably a good thing she changed that guy's name to "John" because I think every mother who heard her story wants to hunt that guy down and castrate him. And she and her brother praying over their caramel dinner for their mom's speedy return had me sobbing! This was one of my favorite podcasts.

When I was in college, I was a TA for a professor who once spent an afternoon explaining to me in great detail how to attach a file to an email. He then asked me to call his wife and ask her to send him a file from their home computer and told me I would probably have to walk her through how to do it. Interestingly enough, she also already knew how email worked.

I had a group work calendar that allowed for some HTML, and when I said I knew how to do that, a man asked me if my husband had taught me. Because obviously, no woman can know how to do a thing her husband had not taught her.

I'm a 24 year old female and have worked in IT support for going on 6 years now. I've noticed that older people, many of them women, don't think that I can help them. I did tech support for the IT Department at the University where I studied, and I had people walk around me to get to the older men who worked there SO MANY TIMES. Even though I had worked there for years longer. Ugh.

At that same job, I also had a young guy come in because his Internet had been blocked because he had been watching porn on campus. He then proceeded to spend 30 minutes telling me some extremely intimate and disturbing details about why he was addicted to porn. I highly doubt he would have been as graphic if it had been a male coworker.

Oh, and my favorite! For a very long time, I didn't want kids. People constantly asked me when we were going to have one, and I'd always reply that I didn't really want kids. When we finally decided we were ready, we kept it a secret until we got pregnant and were 13 weeks along. A guy on my team goes, "Well that's what you get." As if I didn't know how conceiving a child works. As if I /deserved/ to get pregnant for being intimate...with my husband. Jerk.

Happens All. The. Time. We just finished building a house and the number of examples I have would take years and frankly, you dont have that kind of time...you have knitting to do! From random men in home depot that feel they need to come over and lecture my daughter and me in the grout aisle while we get supplies to finish our third bathroom shower and he needs to give us his infinite man knowledge, to car mechanics, helpful neighbors. We have legit had an older Male store employre come up and REACH INTO OUR CART to rifle through what tools we were buying to make sure we got the right thing. Like I was 6 year old sent to get my dad a hammer. You just get used to it I suppose.

When I replaced the O ring on the bottom of my toilet, I discovered that the bolt holes for my toilet weren't the standard size, so I had to take the bolts I had purchased back to the store and look for new ones that would fit. I took one of the bolts I had just removed from the toilet with me to match the size. But the Ace Hardware employee I talked to refused to believe that the bolt I had brought with me came from my toilet:

"I don't know where you got that from, but that's not a toilet bolt. Toilet bolts are bigger than that.""I literally removed this from my toilet five minutes ago. I know it's not the standard size, which is why I brought it in to find the right size.""Why don't you have the man who's doing this project for you come talk to me? He would probably know what is going on.""There is no man working on this project. Again, I personally removed this bolt from my toilet five minutes ago. This is what I need to match.""There's no way you removed that from your toilet. It's too small to be a toilet bolt. Let me show you where the toilet bolts are.""That's what I just brought back to the store, because they don't fit. I need something to match what I just removed from my toilet, since this is how big the hole in the concrete subfloor is. Also, I looked online, and there actually are a range of different sizes of bolts, even though the bigger size is more standard.""Toilet bolts are the size I'm telling you they are, and what you have is not a toilet bolt."

I finally managed to convince him that I refused to buy anything except a bolt that matched the one I had with me, and then he grudgingly found something for me in a weird part of the store that matched what I needed. He kept trying to warn me that I'd be back in five minutes feeling dumb about the fact that I hadn't listened to him before. When I got home, the bolts I purchased fit perfectly. And I haven't been back to Ace since then.

I think “do you ever getting” is not what you meant to say. I’m also a tiny bit hurt that I suggested you knit a Snuggie and you didn’t even mention me, your dearest friend, as you discussed that idea hashtag plagiarism

My dad is one of my favorite people in the world, but he does this to me all the time. I’m literally the only person in my family (including my husband) to not go to business school. I’m the black sheep who got an English degree. My dad will stop what he’s saying mid-sentence about something extremely basic, like supply and demand, to say “well you wouldn’t understand, Michelle, since you didn’t go to business school.” I still understand the basic principles thankyouverymuch.

I worked in banking for 18 years and managed a branch for many of those years. I constantly had customers come in telling me that they’d like to speak to the manager. When I would tell them I was the manager they would argue with me and say that no I wasn’t the manager the man sitting at one of the other desks, one of my employees, was definitely the manager. It was usually older customers that would do this. They would then sit and try to explain to me how banking works. As if my 18 years of experience wasn’t enough to teach me, a woman, anything about banking.

I had a mechanic tell me he needed to order some new rotors for my car and he would call me when they came in. When my husband walked in and I told him what the mechanic said. The mechanic interrupted and said, "I didn't say that. I just said they needed turned." My head snapped around, flames shot out of my eyes, and I said, "Do you mean to tell me that when the (insert word for male reproductive member here [Hi, Eli's Mom!]) walks in, your story changes?!" I never darkened the door of that establishment again.

I don't even hear the mansplaining anymore when I go to the bike shop or the auto shop. Usually one finished sentence for them shuts them up. However, the one that irritates me to no end is the parentsplaining. Like I have no idea about kids, their developmental stages, what to expect from what age, etc. My undergrad is in child development, with the intention of doing Child Life in a hospital, I have taught children how to swim for 7+ years, I probably know more about a child's capabilities and limitations than they do.